The biggest data leak in history just exposed the world's rich and powerful

An obscure law firm in Central America is the source of what’s being called the largest information leak in history.

Emails and documents reveal how the world’s richest and most powerful, from Vladimir Putin to the prime minister of Iceland, hide their business dealings using offshore tax havens and shell companies.

For the past year, hundreds of journalists from around the world secretly analyzed terabytes of data uncovered from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices around the world. Their findings were collectively published on April 3 as the Panama Papers.

How did this all start?

Süddeutsche Zeitung is published in Munich, Germany. Photo: Business Insider.

About a year ago, an anonymous source contacted German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung with data from Mossack Fonseca, a relatively unknown law firm based in Panama that specializes in creating shell companies. These shell companies are held in countries with strict privacy laws and used to obfuscate business dealings.

Süddeutsche Zeitung partnered with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and over one hundred media partners to parse and report on the leaked data. Those media partners include the likes of the BBC and The Guardian.

What’s part of the leak?

Photo: Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The Panama Papers constitute more leaked data than the Wikileaks Cablegate, Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks, and Swiss Leaks combined, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. That makes this data leak the largest in recorded history with:

2.6 terabytes of data from Mossack Fonseca’s founding in 1977 to December 2015

11.5 million documents, including email correspondence and legal contracts

214,000 shell companies used by 12 country leaders, 128 public officials, and 29 Forbes-listed billionaires